Uecomm gears up to be voice and data carrier

Stuart Corner
Monday, 12 March 2007 11:26

Business IT - Networking

Optus subsidiary Uecomm is upgrading its ethernet core network to provide virtual private local area network services (VPLS) and longer term is looking at becoming both a voice and data carrier.

Brendan Park, director of strategy at Uecomm, told iTWire that the upgrade would probably take about a year to complete, and that the vendor had already been selected but not announced.

He said the upgrade would enable Uecomm to offer corporate customers a single ethernet service for both their voice and data between their locations around Australia with improved reliability and guaranteed quality of service. At present the company supports both voice and data traffic for its customers, but as separate services.

At present the only Australian carrier offering VPLS services is Nextgen Networks which launched its service in March 2006 using Alcatel equipment. In mid 2005, Telstra launched its first virtual private LAN service in Asia Pacific covering Japan, Hong Kong, Mainland China, Singapore and Taiwan, but has yet to offer a VPLS service in Australia.

Separately, Uecomm is undergoing internal changes, re-engineering its processes and developing a new strategy. "Three years from now I believe we will need to provide both voice and data services," Park said. "Today large enterprises are buying voice and data services separately but they will expect to buy them together."

This would mean Uecomm competing with parent company Optus but Park said this would not be a bad thing. "They have only 15 percent [of the voice market] so that leaves 85 percent for use to go after." He pointed out that Optus already competes with Uecomm in the provision of data services, adding that Uecomm really had no option because corporate customers soon would not consider companies that could not offer both voice and data. "[doing voice] is table stakes."

A possibility also is that Uecomm would offer hosted IP telephony/IP centrex services, as Optus does. However, Park said he had looked at IP centrex as was not convinced it was the product for Uecomm's market: most of its customers are large corporates which prefer to keep their telephony systems in house.